MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ BY LAURIE ANDERSON (I)

Marina Abramović, Victory, 1997, framed
color photograph mounted on aluminium

In the middle of March Marina Abramović and I sat around in my studio and talked — or riffed, since it was more like making music than talking. We went jumping from subject to subject: the future of objects, falling apart, teachers, picking up threads, audiences, nonattachment. Marina’s voice is breathless. She purrs, rolls a lot of syllables, leaves out articles. Laughs a lot. Talking with her is as intimate as being in a steam room. (...)

MA - Okay, if I can remember. So let’s start with simple questions and then we’ll come to art. When you were a child, did you have some experiences that you can’t explain rationally?

LA - I made them up. I tried to invent situations that were irrational, that had never happened before.

MA - Such as?

LA - A man is walking down the road. A Canadian goose falls right on his head; at the same moment there’s a triple rainbow and the guy has a heart attack. (...)

Marina Abramović, Art Must Be Beautiful, Artists Must
Be Beautiful, 1975, framed black-and-white photograph

MA - The thing is, I’m interested in this idea that we organize everything and then at the last minute, everything changes, takes a different turn. I like that so much. I learned about that from the Tibetans.

LA - Remember the mandala the monks created in the Museum of Natural History in the late ‘80s? It took them six weeks to make it, dropping the colored sand grain by grain. I was there when two kids came by and scuffed the whole thing up.

MA - And then?

LA - The monks laughed.

MA - Of course.

(aqui)

(2010)